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June 24, 2005

Mangle-o-Saxon

True Story. Was sitting in a fun little bar in Dresden, Saxony... Which must be where 50% of our words come from. Although I'm not sure where Anglo is.

And in between sets from the jazz-polka fusion band got talking with a couple of students. During the conversation, one chap mentioned a strange phrase: "Sausage Skin Scenario". I confessed I hadn't heard of it, but he said his economics lecturer used it a lot.

So, feeling quite smug about being vocabularily one-up on me, he explained that it is a business term used to describe a dire situation. To wit, one where when the pressure is on and things are getting pretty hot. All it would take is one prick and the whole thing would explode in your face and there'd be shit everywhere. Just like a badly made sausage on too hot a stove.

I had a little chuckle at the mental image this evoked... but after a few second's pause, the penny dropped. German for "sausage" is "wurst". Sausage skins are also called casings. I asked him if the lecturer had been using the term worst-case scenario. "Yes, that's it!" he replied jubilantly.

This chap had heard the term and thinking he was hearing a hybrid piece of Anglo-Deutsch business jargon, had created his own internal definition and explanation. We all had a good laugh, but I thought it was beautiful, and a pretty damn good depicition and description that loses precious little in the translation.

Comments

Your story reminded me when I just came to Australia, I didn't know the differences of meaning and pronunciation between Fax and F..k (maybe I learned it before,but could not tell the differeces between two words), so I asked the girl at reception "Can you F..k for me a letter to my mum" instead of "Can you fax this letter to my mum". She knew what I meant - but she must also had good laugh. And it still makes me laugh everytime I talk about it.. it made a big difference for a little mistake in pronunciation.